Piano roll control pane

Background: I'm using Home Studio XL and Sonik Synth 2. I'm fairly new to home recording and MIDI, but I've got the basics down for recording and editing audio and MIDI tracks. I can also create and edit tracks in the piano roll view. I have two questions:

1. In the piano roll view, the midi data shows up two octaves above where it's played on my controller (the basic M-audio 88 key controller). In other words, if I play C1, the data shows up as C3 in Home Studio. It doesn't appear that any sort of transpose functions are activated in Home Studio or on the keyboard. Thoughts?

2. I'm trying to learn how to use the control pane -- I think that's what it's called -- in the piano roll view. The Ignite user's guide I have has a general discussion of controlling parameters (e.g., volume) by using the mouse to draw a wave or straight line in the control pane. I've played around with it a bit, and it's had some impact on the recorded tracks, but it's not doing anything I would expect. What I'm looking to do is learn to modulate the volume, pitch, etc. in different parts of a track using this function. Can someone provide some guidance to get started? For example, what do the abbreviations in the drop down stand for? What is the second box (which defaults to 0)? How do I use the bottom drop down to assign tracks?

1. In the piano roll view, the midi data shows up two octaves above where it's played on my controller (the basic M-audio 88 key controller). In other words, if I play C1, the data shows up as C3 in Home Studio. It doesn't appear that any sort of transpose functions are activated in Home Studio or on the keyboard. Thoughts?

Go to the menu bar and click on Options > Global > General. Look for the Base Octave for Pitches field and set it to -2 (minus two). Then click OK on the box.

First you have to know what MIDI is and all of its various controllers. Search the internet or buy books - thats how I learned. Once you've grasped it, check the help files to see how its implemented in HS.